Go For The Gold
by Charynrae
Summary: A series of short snippets featuring Gold and Silver.


"What I don't_ understand_-" comes a growl from his left, and Gold is momentarily snapped out of his hypnosis to catch several flakes of heavy snow in his face as he turns to his grumpy companion- "Is _why_ the Champion would ever think that a mountain would be the ideal choice to train at. There are no trainers up here. There are barely any Pokemon! All we've seen are Golbat, and we all know_ those_ are in short supply." A huff, and then no more noise but the slush and crunch of snow and heavy breathing.

Not for the first time, Gold questions the practicality of bringing Silver on this journey. Even if he had come to the illogical conclusion that because he was headed to Mt. Silver, bringing someone with the same name could only bring good luck. Superstition is silly, he knows.

"You can't train against Golbat anyway, they always use stupid status-affecting moves like hypnosis and confuse ray. You need to keep a fucking medical supply in your bag just to go through a cave!" Gold watches from the corner of his eye as Silver hooks both thumbs into his hood and irritably shakes out the snow building up in the creases.

Gold blinks. Aborts his mentioning of Silver's own former-Golbat. And his affinity for using said stupid moves.

"I swear, you'd better beat this Champion, because we are not making this trip again."

Gold is swept up in the terror so long he doesn't realize he's winning until the Champion is down to two pokemon- Venusaur and a wounded Espeon- while he's still got Misdreavous out on the field and Tyranitaur and Typhlosion in his party. He shoots a grin over his shoulder to where he knows Silver is waiting for him, hugging himself from the cold and trying to feign boredom.

It's almost unfair. The moment he's been waiting for so long has come down to less than 20 minutes of actual battling, half of that he's spent in a daze. Months of traveling. Months of training. Battling Team Rocket, collecting _16_ badges, a climb up a mountain, and it's come down to this.

Fingers twitching involuntairily, he reaches for a pokeball to recall his fatigued Misdreavous and waits for the Champion to return his fainted Espeon to its pokeball. The tension's thick and the urge to say something inane and useless nags at the back of his mind, but the older boy hasn't said a single word to him and he isn't going to be the first to break.

"Hey! Hurry it up and win, jerk, I'm getting sick of this storm!"

Gold snorts and grins wearily down at his sneakers. Good old Silver. The familiar whine is an unexpected trigger for something warm in the pit of Gold's stomach and it's so welcome there, strengthening his weary and frozen

"Right. Go, Typhlosion!"

Sunk down into the snow, knees biting into the hard frozen ground and the seat of his shorts getting soaked, Gold lets out a sigh and closes his eyes. It's over. It feels. It feels like he'd previously had a claw gripped around his heart that just let go, and the organ was just now swelling up to its original size and re-learning how to pump blood through his body. Hell if he knows how long the claw had been there. Doesn't recall it ever making its presence known before now, and really he can only feel the absence of it.

A rustling directly in front of him makes him turn his head up, and he just gets a glimpse of red before his hat is knocked off his head and makes a hollow_ thump_ in the snow beside him.

"Hey-" he begins, pushing himself up from the snow. There isn't anything in his head that he can think of to say more than, "That was my hat." At least he thinks that his accompanying pout is more impressive than his statement. That's usually the case, anyhow.

A smirk plays at the Champion's mouth as he slips his own hat off and holds the bill between his thumb and pointer finger. Gold waits with his mouth hanging open like an idiot, anticipating the moment when he's acknowledged as the new champion and somewhere at the back of his mind hoping that it's going to be worth all the hard work he put in. That there has to be that pivotal moment where this all becomes real and he isn't numb and it all clicks.

And the former Champion drops his hat into the snow.

"So how does it feel?"

It's the last thing he wants to be asked right now, as they're headed down the mountain with knapsacks empty and pokemon worn out and his spirit crushed just a little bit. But Silver's asked, and he's looking over at Gold with that same waiting expression Gold had worn after his battle, so he shrugs.

"It's not what I expected."

The words taste overused on his tongue, and he tries again because he knows he can do better. "I hope it hasn't already sunk in that it's over, because this isn't what I wanted to feel after everything I've been through," tumbles out first, followed belately by a silent_ I deserve more._

There. That was a little better.

There's a sniff at his side and a nudge at his elbow. "And how exactly did you expect it to feel?"

Gold's sure he's missing a very lovely bemused expression on Silver's face. He keeps his eyes in front of him and thinks.

It's probably supposed to feel more monumental, he reckons. Not just.. Not just feeling like a stupid hike up and down a mountain. He was supposed to come down a completely different person, whether he had won or lost. Supposed to walk away knowing more about the world and maybe even feeling closer to being an adult. The urge grips him to scrub furiously at his face but he fights it. For some reason, he can't let Silver know how frustrated he is. Instead he swallows thickly and attempts humor.

"Oh, you know. I expected the Earth to tilt and the heavens to open up and accept me as the new ruler of the gods. All that jazz."

"And of course since that didn't happen... What now?"

And Gold is totally going to answer him with a pithy reply and a possible elbow caught in a bony side- but suddenly there's a black shape gaining character off in the distance, and really, that seems to be of more importance at the moment.

"..You don't think he's here to challenge the Champion, do you? Because your pokemon aren't even healed.."

"Also, no one would believe I'm Champion."

The dark smudge is getting steadily closer and gaining a spiky shape at the top. Gold squints and ignores the snow getting caught in his eyelashes to make out a small fluffy shape ambling along beside the bigger shape.

"Erm. Should we. Should we go and ask what he's doing?" Gold wonders aloud, scrunching up his eyebrows and predicting the "It's none of our business if the idiot wants to climb the mountain for no reason," before it comes.

But Gold thinks that it's rather rude to just let him go. Manners are important, even if the world_ has_ turned on its side and is shooting metaphorical fireballs at Gold's heart. "Oy!" he yells at what's quickly becoming- the Viridian City Gym Leader?

"Erm. Green?" Gold asks.

"Oh shit," Silver mutters.

"Hey! You!" The Gym Leader picks up his pace and the ball of fluff at his side that Gold now knows is Eevee hops up and grabs on to the leg of his trousers. A few awkward hops and almost falls, and then Green is standing before them with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. "You're that kid that got my badge a few days ago."

"I am," Gold affirms, running a hand through his fringe and resisting the urge to shout that he's not only that same kid, but he's also now _the fucking Champion_. Not that it, you know, matters. He didn't just do the monumental and face not only the Elite Four with its acting Champion Lance, but found and faced the legendary shut-in Champion who in fact did not turn out to be a zombie, as some had reported.

"And you." Green squints his eyes at Silver and purses his mouth. "You _stole_ three of the pokeballs I had to travel to Johto to get!"

"I did no such thing!"

Gold knows he did.

"So you beat Red? Seriously?"

Gold doesn't really appreciate the skepticism-he beat every other trainer around didn't he?- but he nods and quietly sips at the hot chocolate provided to them by the Chansey skittering around the Pokemon Center. Typhlosion's already been healed and is now sitting at his side radiating heat and pride. A quick smile to his loyal pokemon and then over to Silver, huddled up in a corner away from Green and Gold and wearing an impressive scowl.

"_Yes_ he beat that weirdo. Stop asking," Silver mutters, and somehow sparks another burst of fury from Green.

"Red is not a weirdo!"

"He is!" Silver insists, and Sneasel climbs up on his shoulder to raise her claws in agreement. "He's a mute who ran away to a mountain top to train to become the best!" He bites his lip and shrugs the shoulder his ornery Pokemon isn't perched on. "But all of that was in vain because now everyone will know that Gold is the best," he finshes quietly and gives Gold a look that makes him take a quick breath and tiny goosebumps to ripple along the back of his neck. It's pride. Silver is _proud_ of Gold.

He turns his smile to the window and manages to drown out the other two's bickering as it continues when Green insists that Red is "Very well-adjusted and is strong enough for anyone to take notice, thank-you-very-much!"

And even though he tries, he can't swallow the feeling of well-being lodged in his throat as Silver bickers and Green rages and Typhlosion nudges his leg and looks pointedly to an uneaten cookie laying on the table in front of them.

This is what it feels like to Make It.


End file.
